Who You Calling Passive-aggressive!? Ok, Fine, You're Right

Although Experts Now Shun The Label, They Say The Hostile-cooperative Behavior Still Must Be Faced.

December 22, 2004|By Benedict Carey, the New York Times

Everyone knows what it looks like. The friend who perpetually arrives late. The co-worker who neglects to return e-mail messages. The very words: "Nothing. I'm just thinking."

Yet though "passive-aggressive" has become a workhorse phrase in marriage counseling and an all-purpose label for almost any difficult character, it is a controversial concept in psychiatry.

After some debate, the American Psychiatric Association dropped the behavior pattern from the list of personality disorders in its most recent diagnostic manual -- the DSM IV -- as too narrow to be a full-blown diagnosis, and not well enough supported by scientific evidence to meet increasingly rigorous standards of definition.

The decision is likely to affect teaching guidelines and research more than treatment and insurance coverage.

But psychologists and psychiatrists with long experience treating this behavior say it is hard to study precisely because it is so covert, common and widely variable.

These experts distinguish between passive-aggressive behavior, which most people display at times, and passive-aggressive personality, which is ingrained and habitual. In milder forms, it can come across as a maddening blend of evasiveness and contrition, agreeableness and impudence, and in severe cases is often masked by more obvious mental illness, such as depression.

LOOK BACK AT CHILDHOOD

Whether pathological or not, experts say, the pattern is often traceable to a distinct childhood experience. New research suggests that in many cases it stems from a positive, socially protective instinct -- to keep peace at home, avoid costly mistakes at work, even preserve some self-respect.

"Some of the people being demeaned as passive-aggressive are in fact being extremely careful not to commit mistakes, a strategy that has been successful for them," if not entirely conscious, says Dr. E. Tory Higgins, director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. They become difficult, he says, "when their cautious instincts are overwhelmed by demands that they perceive as unreasonable."

A similar family dynamic accounts for early development of the behavior, some researchers argue. Dr. Lorna Benjamin, co-director of a clinic at the University of Utah's Neuropsychiatric Institute in Salt Lake City, says people with strong passive tendencies often grew up in loving but demanding families that gave them responsibilities they perceived to be unmanageable.

First-born children are prime candidates, she says: When younger siblings are born, the oldest may suddenly be expected to take on far more extra work than he or she can handle, and in time begin to resent parents' demands without daring to defy them.

This hostile cooperation is at the core of passive-aggression, she and other researchers say, and later in life it is habitually directed at any authority figure, whether a boss, a teacher or a spouse making demands. These passive-aggressive people, Benjamin says, "are full of unacknowledged contradiction, of angry kindness, compliant defiance, covert assertiveness."

IT CAN BE EFFECTIVE

Sometimes, however, mild passive-aggressive behavior can be an effective means to avoid potentially costly confrontations. In such cases the cooperation is more significant than the underlying resentment or hostility.

"A joke can be the most skillful passive-aggressive act there is," says Dr. Scott Wetzler, a clinical psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and the author of Living With the Passive-Aggressive Man. "They recognize a coming confrontation, and have found a clever way to release the tension.''

It is just this instinctive ability to pre-empt and defuse that, paradoxically, may lead to more problematic passive-aggressive behavior.

Higgins of Columbia has described a personal quality he calls prevention pride, a kind of native caution in the face of new challenges, an effort to avoid all errors. The style is adaptive, he says, in that it allows people with a certain temperament to avoid failure and embarrassment.

Research shows that people with a highly cautious personal style who are especially sensitive to rejection are significantly more likely than the others to respond to conflicts by going silent, withdrawing their affection and acting cold.

"The people in this study were not the type who would ever say, `I hate you' to the person's face because they are so careful not to do something that puts them out there," and directly offends their partner, Ayduk says.

The evidence that this sensitivity can be appealing, at least for a while, is recorded in millions of relationships that have lasted for years. A 45-year-old college instructor in Hawaii recently broke off a long relationship with a man she says was a "wonderful, devoted listener, an extremely sensitive person."

But in time, she says, it was apparent that he was also passive-aggressive. When he was in one of his moods, the listening ceased; she may as well not have been in the room.